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Sunday, 21 April 2013

Transcript

Hi, this video is to offer ideas to anyone interested in
working towards a social anarchist revolution - particularly in the UK. I’ll be taking ideas from the Spanish and
other anarchist-type revolutions, as well as contemporary social movements and
revolutionary thinkers since the 1800s. As such, most of the ideas are fairly
well known already, but I will attempt to present them in a short and simple video,
relevant to people living in the UK today.

So let’s start by defining a social anarchist revolution.

The minimal goal, as I understand it, is a community of
people refusing to recognise state sovereignty over them and refusing to
recognise pre-existing capitalist property laws over workplaces.

Instead, after an anarchist revolution, communities will be
managed via networks of community organisations in which all can participate
equally, working in combination with democratic workplace organisations. That
is, social matters that are currently managed by hierarchical, inter-linked government
and capitalist institutions driven for profit and power, will become managed
via non-hierarchical organisations, driven only by satisfying human needs and
wants.

This type of social set up can also be referred to with a
number of other names such as libertarian socialism, or direct democracy.

Now, if we see democratic, self-managed networks of
community and worker organisations as the basis of any revolution, the central task
for revolutionaries is building these organisations and preparing them for running
society. Note that the methods I propose here for building these organisations
will simultaneously weaken and reduce dependence upon current systems of power,
making it possible for them to be finally discarded.

It is important to acknowledge that we already have
organisations designed for helping communities and workplaces democratically
manage themselves. With regards to
community organising, there are two organisations I will mention here. The
first is the International Organisation for a Participatory Society (also known
as IOPS). The second is the Anarchist Federation (or AFED). Both are
non-hierarchical international organisations with local chapters in towns
throughout the UK, which aim to move away from state-capitalism and bring about
democratic self-management.

The main revolutionary workplace organisations are firstly,
the Solidarity Federation, part of the International Workers Association and secondly,
the Industrial Workers of the World union. Both aim to introduce widespread
worker control over all workplaces.

I would argue anyone interested in revolution should, as a
starting point, join one of the organisations, as the most important
revolutionary projects require many people working together. Personally, I believe
the easiest organisation to join as a starting point is IOPS. It has a
user-friendly website and is free to join at the moment. However, there are
benefits to joining any of the others, or even all 4 of the organisations.

Once joined up, I would that there are four types of
projects which should be central to anarchists when working in these
organisations, as they concretely prepare, or fund, the institutions of a
future society. These activities are 1) building worker co-operatives 2)
building democratic credit unions 3) promoting trade union rights and larger
trade unions, and 4) promoting participatory budgeting. Let’s look at each of
these projects in turn.

There are many types of co-ops but key components of a co-op
compatible with social anarchist ideas is that it is non-hierarchical and that
workers have an equal say on management decisions. This is how anarchists want
to see work organised in the future and we can begin this today within today’s
society.

A corollary of this is that anarchist organisations should
seek to build democratic credit unions, which aim to finance local
cooperatives. Transferring enough savings to these credit unions would have the
added benefit of protecting communities against future financial crises. Events
in recent years have shown that this is an ever present threat, but the threat
could become larger if investors panic in response to increased trade union
activities and participatory budgeting - matters we’ll now turn to.

By promoting trade union rights, anarchists can help give
workers at the bottom more power over the companies they work for, particularly
if these workers are part of the SolFed or IWW unions. This would begin moving
current workplaces more in the direction of worker self-management which anarchists
would like to see in the future. Apart
from using this power to benefit themselves in the short term, through better
wages, hours and benefits (perhaps including skills training and education),
workers could begin to effect wider company policy in numerous ways that
promote social interests over profit. For example, they could push for strong
company environmental policies.

In terms of directly promoting anarchist institutions, trade
unions could push for company contracts to be given as far as possible to
worker co-operatives. Additionally, where suitable, they could insist that
their company banks with democratic credit unions. Workers could also use the threat
of strike action to support demands to the government to allocate increased
resources to community participatory budgeting, something we will now discuss.

Participatory budgeting is whereby local communities meet to
discuss and decide how local government money is spent. This is close to how
anarchists aim for communities to be managed in the future, instead of being overseen
by a hierarchical government. Participatory
budgeting has been tried very successfully in Brazil and Venezuela. For
example, In Porto Allegre, the World Bank has found that the system has helped
improve health, education and water services. It has also been tested to a
small degree in other countries in the world, including many towns in the UK.
The task for anarchists should be to push for it to become more widespread,
with more recourses dedicated to it.

Apart from being useful in itself to the anarchist cause, through
participatory budgeting, communities can support the formation of new
non-hierarchical workplaces. For example, if the community agrees to open a new
library, the library could be managed in a non-hierarchical way by staff.

Extending participatory budgeting to as many areas of
government spending as possible could have multiple positive short and long
term effects. For example, communities could invest in public transport and
bicycle paths, which could have important long term benefits on the
environment. Networks of communities controlling NHS
spending could also prevent the government forcing through NHS privatisation.
Such victories could also attract increased public support for anarchist ideas.

It may also be tactically useful for the revolution if local
police spending can be brought under the participatory budgeting process, as
communities may be able to prevent the police being used by the government to
attack the people.

As a part of demanding increased local community control
over government budgets, anarchists could draw attention to central government programs
that should be immediately cut. For example, anarchists could oppose government
subsidies to arms companies that export military equipment to oppressive
foreign regimes.

In this way anarchists could
build support from networks such as Campaign against the Arms Trade which are
also concerned with this type of issue.

In order to further increase funding for community led
programs, anarchist and community organisations may also want to push for new
measures to prevent corporations and the wealthy evade tax. This year, evasion will
cost the UK around £90bn per year – around the same figure as the deficit – which
the middle and lower classes are being held responsible for.[1]

Anarchists could also push a higher tax rate for the richest,
particularly the richest 0.1% whose wealth has exploded in recent years without
any perceivable economic or social benefits to the country as a whole. In fact,
the social consequences of increased inequality have almost undoubtedly been
negative. For example, in their ground-breaking study, the Spirit Level, Richard
Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document how economic inequality is linked to
widespread social problems for at least the bottom 90% of earners in countries
such as the US and UK. Thus Sweden has
far better social indicators than the US and UK, despite having far lower GDP
per capita and median incomes. Higher taxes for the rich could help address this
problem.

Furthermore, by pushing for tax reforms, anarchists would be helping
link anti-cuts activists with participatory budgeting activists, and could help
build support for further change.

With increased tax funds from the very wealthiest, communities
could fund a range of new, not-for profit, co-operatively managed services for
the public, including better schools, youth clubs, better services for the
disabled and public transport, or whatever else communities decide on. All of
this would help improve the living standards of communities. This process could
also be useful in addressing under and unemployment, creating empowering jobs
in all communities throughout the country. Again, all of these short term benefits could help
build broad support for anarchist ideals of collective, democratic action.

Most of the measures discussed here have been aimed at
building the foundations of a future society. However, note that almost all
these steps also work to weaken current systems of power. For example, through
participatory budgeting, central government power is weakened. Through trade
union action, the power of corporate directors is weakened.

Those in powerful positions will inevitably attempt to
resist such changes using either economic power or state violence. For example,
financial investors may move their money overseas in reaction to tax increases
or they may disinvest from companies with strong trade unions. In terms of
political retaliation there may be a violent clampdown by the government, just
as there was a violent clampdown on unions in the 1980s.

Here, further pro-revolutionary action could be the most
beneficial course of action for communities and workers. For example, as
mentioned earlier, savers could survive a banking crisis by saving with credit
unions. Such credit unions could also keep credit flowing to communities. If an
economic crisis occurs in which factories or shops begin closing down, organised
workers may be able to react by taking over these workplaces themselves – as
happened widely in the 2001 Argentina economic crisis. Additionally, earlier this year, closed down
HMV stores were occupied by ex-workers in Ireland, as a protest against unpaid
wages. This was only one step away from the workers deciding to re-open the
stores under self-management. This is something that well-organised communities
and trade union networks could achieve in the future.

Alternatively, in the case of violent suppression by the
government, the best way to resist may be even more public protest as happened
in Argentina in 2001. There, after the government announced a state of siege on
the population in response to economic protests this spurred a far larger
uprising, forcing 5 Presidents out in 3 weeks. The chant in Argentina was, “all
of them must go”, but without a national network of self-management in place,
they accepted provisional government. A similar process can be seen in Egypt
recently. However, if a similar event happens in the UK and worker and
community organisations are prepared throughout the country, with economic and
self-defence strategies ready, they may be able to agree to begin self-managing
the country.

Thanks for listening. Comments and questions on these ideas
are welcome. See you soon.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

Transcript and slides (with larger text for references)...

* Hi, today I will be critiquing the first video on
globalisation by John Green in his Crash Course on World History.

* I consider John’s video to be analytically in line with
mainstream so-called “liberal” commentary on globalisation, found in the news
media and in academic scholarship. I therefore feel that critiquing it will
show up some of the distortions and biases that we are regularly fed.

*So let’s starts

*To begin, John does not provide a clear definition of
globalisation. This is slightly problematic but John does at certain points in
the video explain that globalisation includes increased global economic
interdependence over the last 30 years, so we’ll use this as his definition.

*With this in mind he states the following: *(1 3:15) ”Global Trade is now anarchic and
unregulated, at least by international institutions and national governments.
Much of this has to do with academic economists, mostly in the US and Europe
who have argued with great success that governmental regulation diminishes prosperity
by limiting growth. “

There are many problems with this statement.

Firstly, John’s use of the words anarchic and trade are
somewhat misleading when describing today’s international movement of goods.

For one thing, about a third of so-called trade is simply the
centrally planned cross-border movement of goods and components within corporations
and conglomerates. Another third is thought to be covered by centrally planned
outsourcing.

We also still have significant government interference in
international transactions. One example is so-called anti-dumping legislation,
which is used by many of today’s richest countries, such as the United States,
to protect domestic companies from foreign competition.

With these points in mind, it is difficult to use the word’s
“anarchic” or even “trade” to describe today’s movement of goods.

A second problem with John’s statement is that it is very
misleading to say that economists have argued with great success that
government trade regulation diminishes growth.

Pro-trade liberalisation economists have certainly not one
the argument within the economics field. The most prominent studies arguing
that trade protectionism reduces growth have been completely discredited by
leading economists such as Harvard’s Dani Rodrik. One former Harvard economist,
Paul Bairoch, has stated that the theory that trade liberalisation increases
growth is one of the biggest myths in economic history. Cambridge economist
Ha-Joon Chang has pointed out that nearly all of today’s richest countries,
such as the United States, developed under protectionist economic regimes. The
leading theorist on economic growth, nobel prize winner Robert Solow points out
that the where growth has occurred alongside trade liberalisation, the causal
direction is unknown. These are just some
of eminent economists which reject the view that trade protectionism limits
growth.

It is also unclear that pro-trade-liberalisation economists
have influenced policy-makers. Where trade liberalisation has occurred, it
seems that there are two more significant influences. Firstly, in poorer weaker
nations, particularly in Africa over the last 30 years and Latin America from
around 1980 until around 2000, liberalisation was largely the result of
bullying by rich countries and the IMF. John actually acknowledges this.

Meanwhile, where trade liberalisation has occurred
voluntarily, it seems that this has reflected rational calculations of
interests amongst influential economic groups within nations, rather than some
widespread religious commitment to free trade. This can be seen by how
selectively free-market doctrine is applied. Let us look at the United States
as an example. Tariffs have reduced drastically from 50% in the 1950s, but US
companies are still strongly supported against foreign competition. This farm
subsidies, oil subsidies, anti-dumping legislation, government-supported
research and development, government-procurement, and many other processes. But
protectionism is by no means unique to the US. Hence the latest World Trade
Organisation negotiations have been unable to produce even a limited deal on
liberalisation since beginning in 2001 because almost all parties refuse to drop
their own protectionist measures. Meanwhile
the WTO talks themselves even have protectionist intellectual property rules
built into them.

With these points in mind, we can see that John’s statements
range from unhelpful to misleading when it comes to understanding global
economic developments in the last 30 years.

Now, let us move onto another key point in John’s video.

·(1 5:52)
“While die-hard Marxists deny this – global capitalism has been good for a lot
of people”

·*He puts forward two arguments in favour of this
statement... (Clip of John mentioning economic growth and poverty reduction)

There are major
problems with these statements

Before considering John’s arguments in favour of global capitalism,
it should first be acknowledged that he somewhat misrepresents Marxism, by
implying Marxists don’t see positives in capitalism. In fact, central to Marxism
is the idea of history as progress, with societies going through economic stages
from feudalism, to capitalism to communism. In this context, Marx and Engels praised
capitalism and saw it as progressive for non-industrial countries to go through
a period of industrial capitalism. It is therefore somewhat misleading for John
to imply that die-hard Marxists would deny that capitalism has been good for a
lot of people. There may be many non-Marxists who disagree that capitalism has
been a good thing, but this is a separate discussion.

Now, let us look at the arguments that John puts forward in
favour of capitalism, which happen to be very similar to those put forward by
Marx and Engels. He points to (1)
increased economic growth and (2) material poverty reduction, which are usually
intertwined.

The first problem here
is that John uses unclear terminology to describe the current global economic
system. What we have around the world is not capitalism but varying types of state
capitalism. We mentioned some of the state-capitalist elements of the United States
above and state capitalism is also prevalent in East Asia, the region of most
economic growth and poverty reduction in the last 30 years. As just one
example, whilst China has made some pro-capitalist reforms in the last 30
years, Chinese state-owned enterprises are still responsible for between a
third and a half of economic output.

Furthermore, whilst John
does state that he does not want to confuse correlation with causation, this is
empty after he has just said that it is clear that global capitalism has been
good for a lot of people – the clear implication being that capitalist reforms
have led to growth and poverty reduction throughout the world. However, this is
an extremely contentious claim.

Firstly, if John is still referring to the last 30 years, it
is misleading to imply that it has been a period of economic success. East Asia
is the only region in the world where economic growth and poverty reduction
have not slowed or reversed in the last thirty years. Total world economic
growth has actually been lower than it was during the preceding 30 years. For
example, one measure of the economic problems in Russia since the fall of the
Soviet Union is that life expectancy actually dropped in the 1990s and only
reached the level of the late 1980s again in 2009. Another example is that Sub-Saharan
Africa has suffered a near complete economic disaster in the last 30 years
after moving towards arguably the most purely capitalist economic regime in the
world under IMF supervision. This is following a comparatively promising period
up until the mid-1970s under more state-led policies. Latin America is only now
recovering in the last decade after pro-corporate reforms in the 80s and 90s,
which the region is now moving away from. In the United States, since the 1980s
real wages have stagnated or declined for most workers. Economic growth has also slowed in many European
countries. All of this is overlooked in John’s celebration of the last 30
years.

Furthermore, in East Asia, where there has been growth
alongside pro-market reforms, it is unclear what the causal direction is. That
is, respected economists have argued that East Asia’s integration into the global
economy has happened in response to productivity growth rather than the other
way around. This is the opposite causal direction John suggests.

Setting all this aside, many oppose the idea that economic
growth and material poverty reduction necessarily justify social systems, as
John implies. For example, due to its oppressive nature, many reject the view
that Stalinism was justified despite its record-breaking economic growth and
widespread material poverty reduction. This is even setting aside the mass
murders. Similarly, many reject that slavery was justified by economic growth. Furthermore,
slave owners argued that slaves often lived healthier, longer, more secure
lives than wage labourers. How often this was true is debated to this day, but
even if it was true 100% of the time, many would still argue that this would
not justify slavery. If John is one of
these people, in order to be consistent he needs to put forwards another argument
for the current global order than economic growth and material poverty
reduction.

To conclude, as with many mainstream so-called liberal commentators, John puts forwards a misleading image of world order, and spurious arguments in favour of this order.

We will see more of this in part 2, when we will be looking at Johns’ second video on globalisation.

Thanks for listening.

See you soon.

I have written the references in larger text in these slides. Click to expand the slides...

Transcript (with selected links) and slides with references...

(Note that this video originated as an article for the Huffington Post called 'UK Aid, Imperialism and Child Mortality' [here].)

·Hi

·In this video, I will be looking at aspects of UK aid to Africa that
seem carefully designed to help control and exploit the region, whilst acting
as a subsidy from UK taxpayers to corporations, with the impacts upon the poor being
largely irrelevant. That is, I will be looking at evidence that aid is being
used as a tool of modern imperialism.

·So let’s start.

·Firstly, UK aid to Africa is used to promote discredited pro-foreign
investor, anti-poor, anti-growth programs designed by the World Bank and IMF. This
is done in two ways. Firstly, much UK aid still goes directly through the World
Bank and IMF. Secondly, direct government-to- government aid remains
conditional upon Bank-IMF programs being followed. Under the programs the
world’s poorest countries are barred from using the same strategies that
today’s rich countries used to develop including trade and capital controls.

·This aid conditionality has previously been condemned by UK poverty
activists. For example, in 2005 Make Poverty Historywroteto Tony Blair that the
conditions attached to aid are undemocratic and ‘often work to entrench rather
than overcome poverty.’ In 2006, Christian Aidstatedthat by providing aid through the
World Bank the UK government was ‘paying for poverty’. Such criticism forced
the government to claim that it would change direction. However, several
analysts including theUK Aid Networkhave pointed out that
little real change has materialised.

·Moving on, the UK government is also using aid to promote increased
corporate control of African food systems with a range of harmful impacts upon
the poor. For example, the Department for International Development’s Food
Retail Industry Challenge Fund is aimed at promoting export commodity
production by African smallholders for sale to UK supermarkets, instead of food
production for local needs. In this way, countries such as Kenya export large
amounts of food crops whilst many in the country starve.

·The Department for International Development also funds theAfrica Enterprise
Challenge Fund, which makes grants of between US$250,000 and US$1.5
million for investments in Africa, primarily to large scale agribusiness
companies. The support for their land deals comes at a time when Oxfamreportsthat large firms are
increasingly taking over productive land and water at the expense of African
peasants.

·It seems the UK government is also attempting to use aid to control poverty
groups in Africa. For example,observers in Rwanda report that Western aid provided
to local NGOs, often first going through Western charities, works to divert
them from political advocacy and promoting social reform. Instead, anti-poverty
groups are funded to focus only on technical project work - such as digging
wells - while ignoring underlying socio-economic problems. The thinking of the
UK government seems clear: national economic policies in poor countries are supposed
to be designed by donor governments in collaboration with compliant local
elites. The poor should stay out of the way and concentrate on coping
strategies.

·Before ending this video, I would like to mention Teresa Hayter’s 1971
book, ‘Aid as Imperialism’. In the book she expressed doubt that major donor
governments could be convinced to fundamentally reform aid and stop using it as
a tool of control. She believed that concerned citizens in donor countries had
a choice between: (1) accepting aid in its current form, (2) opposing aid
altogether, or (3) promoting socialism within donor countries so that aid could
be provided in a genuine spirit of solidarity.

·Viewers are invited to discuss her assessment and their general views on
aid, in the comments below.

·Thanks for listening

·See you soon

References can be seen more clearly by clicking on the slides, whereby the slides will expand...

Transcript, selected links and slides with quotations...

·In part one we looked at socialist ideas in the
19th century. Today we will be looking at societies that were
referred to as socialist in the 20th century.

·So let’s start.

·Firstly, we had Soviet Russia, later becoming
part of the Soviet Union.

·Here, the Bolshevik party, led by Lenin took
power in a coup as the Russian government struggled to deal with widespread
agitation by Russia’s lower classes. The Bolsheviks then instituted a one-party
dictatorship and a largely state-planned economy.

·It is worth noting here that there has always
been a lot of confusion, both internally and externally, over whether the Soviet
Union should actually be described as Socialist.

·In fact, whilst Lenin re-named Russia the Russian
Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and later named it as part of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (or USSR), he also regularly explained that the
country was in fact not ‘socialist’.[1]

·Lenin, who was influenced by Karl Marx’s theories
to an extent, thought Russia was not economically advanced enough for a genuine
socialist revolution.[2]
He believed Russia had to develop economically, or Germany had to lead a world
revolution, before real socialism – meaning direct worker control and direct
democracy - could be enacted in Russia.[3]
In the meantime it was the role of the Bolsheviks to develop Russia
economically and maintain political control.

·This included suppressing Factory Committees and
Soviets which were trying to build socialism from below.[4]

·He regularly lashed out at his socialist
opponents, including writing a pamphlet called ‘Left-wing communism – an
infantile disorder’.

·For these reasons, many prominent socialists did
not consider the Soviet Union to be socialist at all and instead referred to it
as state-capitalist, with some considering the collapse of Bolshevik rule a
victory for socialism.

·However, by Lenin’s time, the word socialism had
also become associated with state control of industries, so the Soviet Union
was in some way ‘socialist’ if we apply this new meaning of the word.

·The libertarian socialist, Bakunin, who as
discussed in part 1, had criticised Marx’s ideas and predicted oppressive
Marx-influenced dictatorships, would probably have derided the Soviet Union as
‘’state-socialist’ – which for Bakunin was a contradiction in terms.

· On a
related point, the Bolsheviks referred to themselves as the Communist Party.

·Meanwhile Western governments including those in
the US and UK also described the Soviet Union as a Communist society even
though the Soviet Union matched no traditional definition of communism. This
was possibly to give the word communism a bad name by associating it with Bolshevik
rule.

·Whatever the reasons, the result of the word Communism
being so widely used with regards to the Soviet Union, was that Communism also
took on a second popular definition: that is a one-party state, with a planned
economy or heavy government involvement in the economy.

·This has been re-enforced by other authoritarian
states, such as China and North Korea, also referring to themselves and being
referred to as ‘communist’.

·Moving on, another example of a country referred
to as socialist is Sweden.

·One of the main political parties in that
country, which has been in power for the majority of the last century, is the
Social Democratic Workers Party (also known as the SAP). This party refers to its policies as either
social democratic or democratic socialism – terms which were formerly used as
synonyms for traditional libertarian socialism, anarchism or communism.
However, the SAP uses the terms differently.

·The SAP leadership thought of socialism as
government action designed to achieve social well-being, rather than as a
social system based upon abolishing private ownership of the means of
production.

·Following this, while in power during much of
the 1900s, the SAP kept multi-party, parliamentary democracy and private capitalism
to some extent, with Sweden being home to some of the world’s best known
corporations including Ikea and H&M.

·However, the SAP also enacted welfare policies,
state provision of services such as healthcare, and state companies providing
transport and energy.

·Note that during the 20th century,
mixed economies with similarities to Sweden became prevalent throughout the
world.

·It is also worth mentioning that since it became
common for mixed economies to be referred to as socialist, many people have
begun referring to ANY government intervention in the economy as ‘socialist’.

·This includes welfare spending but also, when a
corporation gets a subsidy, or a bank gets bailed out by the government, some
refer to this as socialism – or in these particular examples, one term used is ‘socialism
for the rich’.

·What is noteworthy here is that if we describe
any government spending in the economy as socialism, then many thinkers who have
considered themselves anti-socialist, such as the famous Austrian economist and
philosopher Freidrich Hayek, have actually been to some extent socialists as
they have favoured state welfare for the poor and other government programs to
prevent unrestricted markets causing excessive social and environmental
damage.

·Additionally, by this definition, several
government leaders who considered themselves anti-socialist were also socialists.
For example, Margaret Thatcher - who strongly criticised socialism - actually
increased total public spending after taking power from the labour party, which
had referred to itself as socialist.

· Moving
on, a final type of socialism I want to discuss is Revolutionary Spain during
the 1930s.

·A fascist coup occurred in Spain 1936, which
sparked an anarchist-influenced revolution throughout much of the country,
during which many urban and rural areas were taken over by anarchist
collectives. Direct worker control of workplaces and broader direct democracy
became widespread.

·The anarchists also formed militias to fight the
fascist and state communist armies, which were both supported by foreign
governments.

·It is worth mentioning that one of the most
popular 20th century British writers, George Orwell, fought with the
anarchist militias and wrote a very interesting book on his experiences called
‘Homage to Catalonia’.

·However, unfortunately for Orwell and his
comrades, eventually, the anarchists were defeated by the foreign supported
armies.

·Note that due to the direct worker control of
workplaces and broader direct democracy, anarchist Spain came very close to the
traditional libertarian socialist ideal favoured by figures such as Bakunin.

·OK, so that brings us to the end of our discussion
of the different uses of the word socialism.

·As we have seen, the term is used extremely broadly.

·In fact almost every modern society in recent
history has matched someone’s definition of ‘socialism’.

·However, we can identify two main types of
socialism.

·Firstly, traditional mainstream socialists
favour direct worker control of workplaces as well as broader direct democracy
in communities.

·More recently, socialism has taken on a second
meaning which is: state involvement in the economy – often for redistributive
purposes, but not necessarily.

Transcript and references to quotes

Hi, my name is David and today I will be talking
about the different meanings of the word socialism. I will also quickly look at
the meanings of some related terms such as communism, anarchism and liberalism.

·So let’s start

·The word socialism originated in the early 19th
century. Some believe the word was first used by the followers of the French
utopian writers Comte de Saint Simon and Charles Fourier.

·However, the origins could also lie in England,
which was going through the industrial revolution. At this time, many
commentators, such as William Thompson and John Francis Bray thought that local
communities or worker cooperatives should jointly control factories and other
work places as well as capital and land.

·An important organisation to think about in the
development of socialist ideas is the first international workers association.

·This organisation was made up of workers, trade
unionists and various revolutionaries or socialists of different kinds.( The
police estimated its membership to be approximately 5 million at one point.)

·The organisation was split into two main camps.
On the one side there were the anarchists led by figures such as Bakunin.

·On the other side were the communists led by
Karl Marx.

·Despite being enemies in some ways, Bakunin and
Marx had very similar views of a future society – which were also similar to
the views early English socialists.

·Firstly, they both opposed concentrated private
economic power – meaning private ownership of the means of production such as
factories and farming land.

·Secondly, they both opposed state power.

·Instead of private ownership and control of
factories, they thought factories should be owned and managed collectively by
workers and communities. They extended
this idea to farms, and other workplaces.

·They also thought the state should be abolished
and society should be run via a system of direct democracy – an idea of
democracy which goes back to the Ancient Athenians who invented the word.

·We also have examples of direct democracy today.
For example, some Swiss districts have had direct democracy for centuries.

·Also, in Portoe Allegre they have a famous
system of participatory budgeting where thousands of people from the city meet
to decide on local government spending. The system has helped improve water,
health and education services so the experiment is being rolled out to many
cities throughout the world including London and New York.

·Returning to Bakunin and Marx, a social
experiment which they praised was the Paris Commune of 1871. Here, the
Parisians rose up against the government and instituted a direct democracy.
They also turned several workplaces into worker cooperatives. However,
eventually the commune was crushed by the French government.

·Now, Marx and the communists referred to the
future society they favoured as ‘communism’. They sometimes used the word socialism interchangeably
with communism, but often avoided the word socialism because this term was also
associated with ideas of St Simon, Fourier and others who they were not
supportive of.

·Now, Marx and the communists also thought that
there needed to be a temporary state government to manage the transition from
capitalism to communism. This state government could either be achieved through
the election of the communist party or it could be achieved through
revolution.

·However, many revolutionaries such as Bakunin
opposed the idea of a transitional state, arguing that it would either fail to
finish revolution or that any such state would end up oppressing the people.
These revolutionaries referred to themselves as either anarchists – anarchy
meaning no ruler - or often just socialists. Meanwhile, they referred to Marx
and the communists as ‘state socialists’.

·Another term used to describe the anarchists was
‘libertarian socialists’.

·It is worth noting that today the words
anarchist and libertarian have taken on different meanings but this is how they
were popularly used in the late 1800s.

·Let us look at the word libertarian. Today, in
the US, the Libertarian party, opposes state power to some extent but unlike
libertarian socialists, does not fully oppose the state. Also, unlike
libertarian socialists the libertarian party does not oppose concentration of
economic power.

·It is worth noting here that on this, the
libertarian party is also very different to the father of classical liberalism,
the enlightenment philosopher, John Locke. Like libertarian socialists, Locke
opposed both private and state power. Locke proposed that private economic
power should be checked by people’s ownership of property being limited to what
they could manage with their own labour. He was a pre-industrialist so society
consisted mainly of farmers. He thought
farmers should only own the small plot of land which they farmed themselves,
without interference from rich landlords who didn’t do the work directly.

·He also thought that state power should be
limited to keeping in place this kind of system and that the people should
revolt if the state over-stepped this mark.

·It is a definite possibility that if writing later,
Locke would have also opposed concentrated ownership of modern means of
production such as factories and like libertarian socialists, would have
preferred communal ownership.

·Moving on, other terms used to describe the
future society favoured by both the traditional anarchists and the communists
included democratic socialism and social democracy – although again, these
terms have different meanings today.

·Recently, other terms have been used such as
‘radical democracy’. Others just use the word ‘democracy’.

·Now, many socialist groups during the 19th
century engaged in parliamentary politics. This included the Communist Party
which wanted to be elected to government, with the aim of putting in place communism.
However, the Communist manifesto also outlined other short-term policies such
as universal education, progressive taxation and state control of key
industries.

·Other socialist parties such as the German
Social Democratic Party had similar programs and in this way, the terms ‘socialism’,
‘social democracy’ and ‘democratic socialism’ came to also be associated with state
redistribution and provision of public services as well as state control of
industries.

·OK, so that brings us to the end of part 1 of
this video. So far we’ve seen that the word socialism has several meanings. It
could mean a pre-planned utopia, a direct-democracy with communal ownership of
the means of production, or a state-managed economy with redistributive
policies.

·During the 20th century the word took on even more meanings and that will be the subject of part 2 of this video.

References to quotes can be seen more clearly by clicking on the slide whereby the slide will expand...